TEX'S BACK-ISSUE QUEST EPISODE #46 Zatanna

Happy Sunday my fellow Questers!!

    I hope you are having a wonderful weekend, and I hope that you have a great time with family and friends tonight watching Super Bowl LI!!

   I am back to fulfill a promise to you: we are continuing our journey into...JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK!! Today, we'll talk about one of the founding members...

It's Zatanna, Mistress of Magic!!! Zatanna was created by comic-creator legends, Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson.

Here are my TWO cool copies of "Hawkman" vol. 1, #4, published by DC Comics in November of 1964. These feature the very first appearance of Zatanna, Mistress of Magic!! Yep, I own TWO copies. Sweet, right?

But who is Zatanna? Glad you asked!

   Zatanna Zatara is the daughter of Giovanni "John" Zatara, a stage magician who also happened to have the power to use real magic. He used his powers as a successful stage magician and as a well-known vigilante. Zatara fell in love with a woman named Sindella who was a Homo magi, and it was from this union that Zatanna was born. But the happiness of the couple would be short lived, as a series of unfortunate events seemed to spiral Zatara's life downwards soon after. First, his wife apparently died, then he was helpless to stop the deaths of his friends Thomas and Martha Wayne - all these things soon brought Zatara low enough to find solace at the bottom of an empty liquor bottle. However, when a young Bruce Wayne showed up at his doorstep seeking to become an illusionist and escape artist, things would begin to look up for the old magician. It was then that Bruce and Zatanna would meet and begin to forge the strong bond of friendship that exists between them to this very day.

   Accounts differ on the exact time-frame, but sometime in Zatanna's adolescence, her father, Zatara, disappeared. With the help of Batman and others, Zatanna investigated Zatara's disappearance and strengthened her ability to wield her magic in the process. She assisted the Justice League of America with several threats before being reunited with her father and being given full-fledged membership in the League.  In her time with the League, Zatanna helped the Justice League defeat many threats, mystical and otherwise, and blossomed into one of the most powerful sorceresses in the DCU, and a true hero. Zatanna would become a founding member of Justice League Dark soon after the Justice League's failed attempts to stop the Enchantress who had gone insane from being separated from her host, June Moon. On to the FUN FACTS!!

FUN FACT 1: Zatanna found out her parents were alive. She was reunited with her them only to have them taken away from her again. They both gave their lives to save hers:

From: "Swamp Thing" Vol 2, #50

FUN FACT 2: Zatanna inherited her abilities from her parents, and continues to perfect them through hard work. Her abilities include healing, flight (if necessary), teleportation, telekinesis, reality alterations, elemental control, weather manipulation, astral projection, time travel and control, and so much more. And she is multilinguistic and trained in advanced hand-to-hand combat techniques. 

FUN FACT 3: Zatanna has been very close friends with Bruce Wayne/Batman since they were young. She almost destroyed their friendship when she chose, along with several other League members, to magically wipe Dr. Light's mind so that he would no longer be a threat to them or their families (Dr. Light was a serial rapist - he had just raped Sue Dibny, wife of The Elongated Man). When Batman tried to stop this, she wiped his mind as well. When he later discovered what she had done, his trust in her was severely broken. Seemingly, their relationship has recovered now. 

FUN FACT 4: Zatanna has tampered with minds other than Batman's and Dr. Light's. Catwoman's turn from villain to hero was attributed to Zatanna's mind manipulation.

FUN FACT 5: Zatanna is held by fans as one of the sexiest female superheroes in the DCU. She is usually drawn quite voluptuously by artists and her revealing attire (complete with fishnet stockings) is controversial in that it caters to male eyes...and it is very impractical. However, this hasn't stopped her female fanbase from growing, neither has it stopped legions of cosplayers from paying homage to the Mistress of Magic.

FUN FACT 6: Although she doesn't need them to use her powers, Zatanna often uses a magician's top-hat and a magic wand.

FUN FACT 7: Zatanna practices Logomancy - activating spells by speaking backward to cast them.

FUN FACT 8: Zatanna owns a mansion named Shadowcrest where all her powerful mystical artifacts and her immense occult library are kept secure.  It is the ancestral home of the Zatara family, and it is warded against threats, mystical or otherwise. Besides this...the mansion has been known to, er...move itself to different locations. 

FUN FACT 9: No one knows the extent of the power Zatanna possesses, nor the number of abilities. 

FUN FACT 10: Zatanna will be featured in the upcoming animated film, "Justice League Dark":

Cool, right?

    That's all for today!! Enjoy the Super Bowl...And may the Magic be with you all!!

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